What non-scary things can cause isolated low DLCo?
October 30, 2021 4:17 PM Subscribe
I went for a lung function test a month ago to check for asthma after a few decades of periodic coughing/wheezing, explained below. Everything including spirometry has come back fine, but the DLco showed mild to moderate gas transfer impairment. I'm going for further testing this week including a CT scan, but am freaking out about what this could mean. The doctor did say infection can cause low DLCo and I'm wondering if anyone could shed light on what infections, and any other non scary things might cause this.
As above: I went for a lung function test recently to check for asthma. Mainly because after I get colds/flu I tend to get a wheezing cough for a couple of months afterwards (I've had this for the past 20 years, inhalers have not helped, docs have not been able to really diagnose this). What tends to help this is a medication to dry up the mucus like Mucinex/antibiotics if warranted to dry things up, or sleeping on a wedge pillow during the cold so the mucus doesn't drip down the back of my nose. This has actually been very effective in the past few years, but recently I started getting post nasal drip which I assumed was due to allergies and seemed to kick things off again.
Everything including the spirometry test has come back fine, but the DLCo marker was 57%. I'm getting a blood test, CT and EKG this week but between the doc mentioning interstitial lung disease (he is an ILD specialist) and my internet searches on fibrosis and other causes of low DLco I'm now totally freaking out. He did mention it could be caused by infection (and said double vaxxed folks can have had Covid without testing positive) so I'm hoping maybe I had an infection at the time. I did have a post nasal drip (which I thought was allergies) when I had the lung function test, which as usual resulted in an intermittent wheezing cough and some uncomfortable chest tightness for me. Now I'm wondering if I had an infection instead of allergies at the time and if that could have caused a DLCo of 57%. I'm in my late 30s, don't work in any kind of field exposed to toxins, female, small built, slightly underweight, low blood pressure, embarrassed to say I don't really exercise regularly at all so I am in shitty shape for my age, although I can play a game of squash for about 20 minutes before I start getting winded so it's not like I'm severely physically impaired. I do get tired during the day and want to nap sometimes, but I also have bad sleep habits and am going through intense therapy for trauma at the moment so I'm not sure any tiredness is related to anything other than getting 5 solid hours of sleep a night and being stressed out about other stuff.
Regardless, I'm very scared and any good vibes/prayers would be really appreciated.
Thank you!
As above: I went for a lung function test recently to check for asthma. Mainly because after I get colds/flu I tend to get a wheezing cough for a couple of months afterwards (I've had this for the past 20 years, inhalers have not helped, docs have not been able to really diagnose this). What tends to help this is a medication to dry up the mucus like Mucinex/antibiotics if warranted to dry things up, or sleeping on a wedge pillow during the cold so the mucus doesn't drip down the back of my nose. This has actually been very effective in the past few years, but recently I started getting post nasal drip which I assumed was due to allergies and seemed to kick things off again.
Everything including the spirometry test has come back fine, but the DLCo marker was 57%. I'm getting a blood test, CT and EKG this week but between the doc mentioning interstitial lung disease (he is an ILD specialist) and my internet searches on fibrosis and other causes of low DLco I'm now totally freaking out. He did mention it could be caused by infection (and said double vaxxed folks can have had Covid without testing positive) so I'm hoping maybe I had an infection at the time. I did have a post nasal drip (which I thought was allergies) when I had the lung function test, which as usual resulted in an intermittent wheezing cough and some uncomfortable chest tightness for me. Now I'm wondering if I had an infection instead of allergies at the time and if that could have caused a DLCo of 57%. I'm in my late 30s, don't work in any kind of field exposed to toxins, female, small built, slightly underweight, low blood pressure, embarrassed to say I don't really exercise regularly at all so I am in shitty shape for my age, although I can play a game of squash for about 20 minutes before I start getting winded so it's not like I'm severely physically impaired. I do get tired during the day and want to nap sometimes, but I also have bad sleep habits and am going through intense therapy for trauma at the moment so I'm not sure any tiredness is related to anything other than getting 5 solid hours of sleep a night and being stressed out about other stuff.
Regardless, I'm very scared and any good vibes/prayers would be really appreciated.
Thank you!
I can’t speak to your particular condition, but I’ve discovered some things in the past year that might be helpful to you. Like you, I’ve always been pretty physically healthy until I happened to have a blood test last year that showed up a couple of odd numbers, which got me referred for other tests, which in turn raised other queries which led to other tests. It turned into an almost-comical domino effect where every time they looked at one thing, they’d be like “Oh, but hang on, there’s also something odd over there, we’d better take a look at that too.”
Long story short, there’s barely a bit of my body that hasn’t been scanned or examined in the past year. I’m honestly struggling to remember them all, but off the top of my head I can think of six totally different imaging or scanning or testing techniques that have been used on maybe five different organs. Upshot is, it turns out I have two health conditions that cause me no symptoms whatsoever and quite possibly never will, which require no treatment, and which - while it’s possible they might cause me slightly more issues in future - I also might have happily lived my entire life and never known about them if people hadn’t gone looking. Loads of people have these things and never know it and it doesn’t matter at all.
The big thing I learned is that when, like us, you’ve been generally healthy, as soon as something comes back abnormal, or a doctor says they want to take a closer look at something by scanning it, you immediately think: “OMG then I have cancer!” but in fact there are thousands of things, from passing infections to chronic but 100% manageable conditions, that can require looking at. I mean SO many different things. But we don’t hear about most of them because they’re so manageable that people don’t talk about them much. But the worst is an absolute edge case and extremely rare. That’s why they tell you not to consult Dr Google, because you’ll see the extremely rare scary edge case, not the millions of people who came away from their test with a clean bill of health or something only mildly bothersome.
My recommendation to stay sane in the meantime would be to approach this as an anxiety problem where you need to deploy your dealing-with-anxiety tricks, not a health problem where you try and assuage your anxiety through research.
You could research the options for hours and it turns out you had a mild case of covid that’s now gone, and what a waste of time that all was. If the tests do turn something up your doctor will help you find the information you need. Until then, give yourself permission to shelve this train of thought as much as possible until you actually know what the situation is. Distraction, exercise, socialising, easy TV, whatever works for you. Then revisit, if needed, when you’re armed with information rather than fear and speculation. All the best.
posted by penguin pie at 6:31 AM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
Long story short, there’s barely a bit of my body that hasn’t been scanned or examined in the past year. I’m honestly struggling to remember them all, but off the top of my head I can think of six totally different imaging or scanning or testing techniques that have been used on maybe five different organs. Upshot is, it turns out I have two health conditions that cause me no symptoms whatsoever and quite possibly never will, which require no treatment, and which - while it’s possible they might cause me slightly more issues in future - I also might have happily lived my entire life and never known about them if people hadn’t gone looking. Loads of people have these things and never know it and it doesn’t matter at all.
The big thing I learned is that when, like us, you’ve been generally healthy, as soon as something comes back abnormal, or a doctor says they want to take a closer look at something by scanning it, you immediately think: “OMG then I have cancer!” but in fact there are thousands of things, from passing infections to chronic but 100% manageable conditions, that can require looking at. I mean SO many different things. But we don’t hear about most of them because they’re so manageable that people don’t talk about them much. But the worst is an absolute edge case and extremely rare. That’s why they tell you not to consult Dr Google, because you’ll see the extremely rare scary edge case, not the millions of people who came away from their test with a clean bill of health or something only mildly bothersome.
My recommendation to stay sane in the meantime would be to approach this as an anxiety problem where you need to deploy your dealing-with-anxiety tricks, not a health problem where you try and assuage your anxiety through research.
You could research the options for hours and it turns out you had a mild case of covid that’s now gone, and what a waste of time that all was. If the tests do turn something up your doctor will help you find the information you need. Until then, give yourself permission to shelve this train of thought as much as possible until you actually know what the situation is. Distraction, exercise, socialising, easy TV, whatever works for you. Then revisit, if needed, when you’re armed with information rather than fear and speculation. All the best.
posted by penguin pie at 6:31 AM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
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posted by Oyéah at 7:45 PM on October 30, 2021